Telling American Stories

From the NewsHour last week, an absolutely heartbreaking story about high school students in Pomona, California living through the recession. Their resilience, and their reaction-finding ways to help their families, and each other- is key to understanding where we are today in this country.

We’re remembering that we’re all in this together.

I know it’s been awhile, and I’ll have more to say about what’s happening with this site soon, but for now, here’s something I wrote recently for our work blog at UndergroundUnderground.

Something happened on November 4, 2008—on that much we can all agree. Americans went to the polls in record numbers and elected a candidate whose most consistent message over the nearly two-year long campaign was as simple as it was clear: Change.

But what kind of change? How fast, and in what directions? Now that we’re being heard, how do we want to set the agenda? These aren’t idle questions, particularly for Underground and our clients, many of whom have spent the past eight years fighting a rearguard action against policies that were an unmitigated disaster for the environment, human rights, and the very idea of using science to fashion solutions to the immense problems we face. So where do we start, and how do we begin?

We’re glad you asked:

• Come out of your defensive crouch. There’s no question that we’ve been down so long, it was starting to look like up. Crafting communications strategies in a world where you could almost always count on the administration and its allies doing pretty much the worst possible thing on any given issue at least had a kind of comforting consistency to it. They’re for it? We must be against it, then. But that world is gone, and it’s time to get off defense, to stop thinking about stopping bad policy, and start thinking about what the best policy might look like. Realize that the public is on your side. You have allies in government who will be willing to listen. You need to help them set the agenda.
• Take a moment to take stock. Of course, this incredibly hopeful political moment is happening at the same time our economy is in collapse, and many of our organizations are facing a financial storm the likes of which we’ve never seen. With budgets tight and uncertainty in the air, it’s time to take a deep breath and ask some serious questions. Who are we as an organization, and who do we want to be? What changes in approach are we likely to see from the new administration on the issues we work on? Even if your budget won’t allow you to launch a major campaign right now, what plans can you lay for when the economy turns around? Remember that smart, efficient communications become even more important in an economic downturn.
• How will you take advantage of new opportunities? From the economic recovery package to renewable energy standards and a dozen other major initiatives, the new administration will be moving legislation through the Congress. Now is the time for some strategic thinking. Where do the issues you care about fit into the President’s agenda? What can you do to influence policy? How can you tie your priorities into the big initiatives that are going to dominate the news for the next year? A lot of trains are about to leave the station. Make sure you’re on board.
• Learn the lessons of the 2008 campaign. Smart organizing and clear messaging tied to cutting-edge social networking led to political victory in 2008. There’s no reason it can’t do the same for policy wins in 2009. A whole new generation of politically engaged young people looking for practical solutions is ready to be mobilized. They grew up on the Internet, and have no hesitation about using it to connect, organize, and even define who they are as people. We need to be doing everything we can to understand the tools they use and how they use them. Political identities formed in youth can last a lifetime—if we can get this generation to realize they’re environmentalists, or care about human rights, we’ll be building a durable majority for the issues we care most about.
• Find a new frame.There’s a common thread running through the disasters of the past eight years. Ideology, self-dealing by the powerful, and an assault on science-based policy have left us with bankrupt institutions, metastasizing crises on half a dozen fronts, and a mounting sense that our leaders aren’t up to the challenge. The good news is that the people who led us down that path have now been thoroughly discredited. We need a new frame: a clear-eyed acknowledgement of the mess we’re in (without getting bogged down in looking backward), coupled with a firm commitment to working our way through our problems with science, reason, and plain old hard work. The public believes we’ve gone seriously off the rails the past few years, but don’t bet against the American people’s core optimism. We all know we’re in a world of hurt right now. The real fight is going to be over how we get out of it. Focus on finding solutions.
• Look forward boldly. It’s tempting to pull back right now, play it safe and stick with what’s worked before. But that’s precisely the wrong path to take. Our budgets may be reduced, but they’re not gone completely, and we need to turn up the volume on our efforts, find and champion the best ideas, choose messages and creative that will cut through the clutter and get the attention of our constituents (and our funders). Now is the time for bold answers to big problems, and it’s our job to supply them.
  

This is just fantastic. Google is now hosting Life magazine’s photo archive, and it’s searchable through Google images. I had a heck of a time deciding what image to use here– there’s so many shots from our history, pictures famous and not, uplifting and heart-wrenching. Definitely worth a bit of your time.

I came across this story recently on Edge of the American West, a fascinating blog run by a couple of history professors. It’s a story that I had never heard before, featuring some characters I had heard of, including Woody Guthrie, and Paul Robeson, an African-American scholar, athlete, actor, singer and civil rights activist back during the middle of the last century. Robeson had some pretty left-wing politics, and the temerity to schedule a benefit concert for the Civil Rights Congress in Peekskill, New York during the summer of 1947. Here’s what happened:

Throughout the summer, threats of violence against Robeson and the scheduled August concert filled The Peekskill Evening Star. The night of the 27th sheriffs watched as 300 men — many American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars members — used clubs, rocks, bottles, knives, and fence posts to smash cars, destroy the stage and seating, and attack concertgoers. A dozen victims were rushed to the hospital. Protesters even set a cross alight on a nearby hill. During the nearly three hour attack, the mob shouted, “We’re Hitler’s boys,” “Lynch Robeson,” “Kill every Commie bastard in America,” and “Every N—- and Jew bastard dies here tonight.” Meanwhile the authorities did nothing and arrested no one. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover declined to investigate the incident unless officials at the Justice Department compelled him to. They didn’t.

Robeson rescheduled the concert for Sunday afternoon, September 4th. A mob of several thousand heckled and taunted the 20,000 concertgoers as they entered the park. As Robeson sang, eyewitnesses sighted guns on a ridge pointed at the stage below. It wasn’t until the end of the concert that the taunts turned violent. Traffic was forced to a crawl on the only exit, a four-mile, narrow dirt road. Protesters lined the way, throwing rocks at cars and busses, sending broken glass everywhere. Some of the mob pushed vehicles over and attacked frantic passengers with bats and clubs, yelling “Go back to Russia you n—–!” Police again stood by as over 140 men, women, and children suffered broken bones, lacerated faces, and fractured skulls (see the video above).

I’ve been reading Rick Perlstein’s books about the modern conservative movement, Before the Storm and Nixonland, and I’ve been consistently surprised by the descriptions of the far-right elements that provided a lot of the foot soldiers for the movement. Later waves of conservatives tried to whitewash these John Birch Society-types out of their story, though they still, oddly, crop up occasionally, as when Sarah Palin quoted one in her convention speech.

They were there, though, part of the American story, and it’s worth remembering.

From the Library of Congress’ Flickr Pool (yeah, who knew?), a reminder that our iconic images of American history aren’t always 100% accurate.

Well, that’s a start anyway.

What you see below in the previous posts, and at right, in the numbered sections under Narrative, are the core of what I’m calling Telling American Stories. You can also download it in convenient PDF format. All of this represents a first take at the subject, version 1.0 if you will.

Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll be adding to it here on the front page: stories and images and videos that I think tell a part of the American story. So please do check back, as there’s a lot more to come. And as always, I’d be grateful for any feedback, criticism or words of support you might want to share via comments.

These twin values of liberty and justice are intimately connected, and not just by virtue of their recitation at the end of the Pledge of Allegiance. Liberty, of course, refers to the set of rights and responsibilities a free people grant to, and require of, themselves and Justice, the essential requirement for fairness in a nation that is committed to the rule of law and to protect that hard-won liberty. Both liberty and justice contain within their meaning the understanding that they must apply equally to every American if they are to have any meaning at all.Read more>>

For better and for worse, America is a deeply capitalist society, and as such, it values entrepreneurship highly. Whether it’s Bill Gates on the cover of another business magazine, or Oprah Winfrey on the cover of her own magazine (she is, each and every month), Americans can become famous for their business acumen and sheer wealth, and many have. Americans also value generosity, both because it appeals to their sense of fairness and because it implies success and financial well-being. Using language that emphasizes the entrepreneurial nature of our work—empowering individuals and communities to succeed, grow, and prosper— can help place that work in a context that many Americans easily understand and naturally tend to support. Highlighting the generosity of members of our community encourages respect for them and encourages those with even greater resources to support our work.

Community, whether it conjures up images of a neighborhood block party or a small town gymnasium filled to the rafters for a high school basketball game, is highly valued—and often a source of great pride—for all kinds of Americans.

To understand the role of community in our history, the example of San Francisco’s Chinatown is instructive. Already a thriving neighborhood at the time of the 1906 earthquake, Chinatown was completely destroyed along with the rest of the city. As planning for re-building commenced, the mayor decided that Chinatown should be relocated from its position at the center of the city to its outskirts. The people of Chinatown rejected the proposal, and got to work, constructing new buildings that they did not own, rebuilding homes and businesses because of the immense importance they placed on rebuilding their community.

The value of community, of pulling together to make a better life for its members, has long been understood by organizers as important for rallying support among an organization’s base. Self-reliance, for many conservatives, would doubtless call to mind images of the rugged individual. By connecting the two values—showing how empowering a community helps to empower individuals—we can connect with two deeply held American values that resonate throughout our history and across our politics.